Symbols of Defiance: A Semiotic and Ethnolinguistic Analysis of the Jolly Roger in One Piece

These past years have witnessed an increasing usage of symbols from imaginative entertainment in actual sociopolitical discourse. A good example is the Jolly Roger flag belonging to the One Piece franchise, which is frequently appropriated by Indonesian audiences across online and offline contexts. The current study adopts a qualitative multilayered semiotic-ethnolinguistic analysis to explore the sociocultural signification of the Jolly Roger flag in Indonesian contexts. Using the signification concept developed by Peirce and the associated modules of denotation, connotation, and myth developed by Barthes, the study investigates the representation of the flag both as a device used in the animation and as a transformed sign shaped by ethnolinguistic and sociopolitical interpretation. The study draws on data from 120 texts spread across different social networks, namely Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X, and 15 photographic documentations of the flag’s offline public presence. The results show how the Jolly Roger is a complex symbol negotiating identity formation, social critique, and different levels of symbolic defiance. Audience reception indicates a co-mix of playfulness, fan practices, and local sociopolitical readings, thus supporting the understanding that symbolic defiance is always culturally mediated and context-dependent. This research adds to existing debates on the re-interpretation of transnational media symbols using qualitative approaches in semiotic research, ethnolinguistics, and sociopolitics, showing how evocative transnational media symbols can achieve ideological functions in a determined cultural context.